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Description
This study aims to understand how Brazilian Olympic athletes make sense of their subjectivities throughout their sports trajectory towards the Olympic Games. Among the different manifestations of the elite sporting phenomenon, the Olympic Games occupy the top place in the contemporary scenario, as they are considered the ultimate goal in the athletes' careers. Approximately 3,452 Brazilian athletes have participated in the various editions of the Olympic Games. In the first edition hosted in South America, in 2016, in Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, 465 athletes represented Brazil, this being the largest delegation in the country's history. Seeking to give voice to these subjects, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight athletes who participated in the edition in Brazil and interpreted through discourse analysis (Foucault, 1971, 1982; Orlandi, 2001).The official events and media productions showcase these athletes as subjects representing the country, perpetuating and producing stories focused on nationalism. Pires et al. (2010) showed that the media narrative about the athletes in newspapers from Santa Catarina went from the expectation of good results to the near disappearance of those athletes who did not reach the expected results. Our analysis focuses on how the athletes questioned and resisted this media spectacle and their objectification as a productive subject (Foucault, 1971). Yet, athletes in individual sports also embodied the imperative of sport success. This discourse tied them to their own identity as ‘athletes’ in an embarrassing way, making them subject to their sport results.
